Sometimes a story about one topic reveals more about another. In Pewaukee, there have been chronic concerns about the temperament and conduct of that community’s police chief. In early August, the Pewaukee City Council requested that the city’s Police and Fire Commission remove police chief Gary Bach from office. Among the Common Council’s charges against him were (1) lying, (2) gossiping, and (3) other departmental violations.
(Gossiping in Bach’s case involves alleged trafficking in rumors about personnel changes in the department.)
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has reported on the story, and prior allegations, against Chief Bach. (See, Pewaukee Moves to Fire Police Chief.)
I’m not from Pewaukee, and I have no guess how this matter will be decided. (Outside consultants, evaluating the Pewaukee Police Department, noted that it was a troubled organization, and the consultants did not believe that the ailments of the department “can be solved under the present leadership.”)
This post, though, is not about policing. It’s about a proposed technology park, and other improvements, that would change the culture of our town, Whitewater, Wisconsin, population 14,296.
I wrote that a technology park is unlikely here, in part because the sort of newcomers it would attract would not tolerate Whitewater’s business as usual. (See, A City-University Technology Park in Whitewater.)
If we experience considerable upper-middle class growth, so that we look more like a successful suburban community than a small town, our current leadership will prove inadequate, in both appointed and elected positions.
Those who benefit from the existing culture will resist newcomers bringing more exacting standards; newcomers with exacting standards will shun a community that burdens unnecessarily both free exchange and free association. If those newcomers do arrive in significant numbers, then they’d likely reject business as usual here in favor of a new, spontaneous order. Knowing that, would-be town squires will fight to kill any plan that might bring these changes.
There are those who would benefit – small entrepreneurs, successful business people unafraid of opportunity and change, those who advocate a less stifling culture, those who prefer true professionalism to slogans and excuses.
Expect an old guard, otherwise dissipated and enervated, to stir as it might against these changes.
(After all, they fight against the campus as an undergraduate institution; they’ll be less inclined to support a more expansive role for the campus.)
I have no idea if Chief Bach did those embarrassing and unprofessional things that he’s accused of doing; we already know that Pewaukee has a culture that rejects even the appearance of those things. What culture is that? It’s the culture of free exchange and free association, the world beyond cliché, sloganeering, and excuse-making. It’s the culture of American excellence.
We, too, will have it one day. In that time, people in Whitewater will look back, and scarcely recognize our time.
Until then, lots of work for bloggers.